No abstract

The out-of-curriculum project team "Rika-Kobo", organized by undergraduate students, has been actively engaged in a variety of continuous outreach activities in the fields of science and technology including optics and photonics. The targets of their activities cover wide ranges of generations from kids to parents and elderly people, with aiming to promote their interests in various fields of science and technologies. This is an out-of-curriculum project team with about 30 to 40 undergraduate students in several grades and majors. The total number of their activities per year tends to reach 80 to 90 in recent years. Typical activities to be performed by the project team include science classes in elementary and/or secondary schools, science classes at other educational facilities such as science museums, and experiment demonstrations at science events. Popular topics cover wide ranges from explanations and demonstrations of nature phenomena, such as rainbow colors, blue sky, sunset color, to demonstration experiments related to engineering applications, such as polarization of light, LEDs, and optical communications. Experimental topics in optics and photonics are especially popular to the audiences. Those activities are very effective to enhance interests of the audiences in learning related knowledges, irrespective of their generations. Those activities are also helpful for the student members to achieve and/or renew scientific knowledges. In addition, each of the activities provides the student members with effective and advantageous Project-Based-Learning (PBL) style experiences including manufacturing experiences, which are advantageous to cultivate their engineering skills.

No abstract

The coloring phenomena caused by optical rotation of polarized light beams in sugared water can be an appropriate subject for use as an educational tool. In this paper, such coloring phenomena are studied in terms of theory, and the results are compared with experimental results. First, polarized laser beams in red, blue, or green were allowed to travel in sugared water of certain concentrations, and changes in the irradiance of the beams were measured while changing the distance between a pair of polarizing plates arranged in the sugared water. The angle of rotation was then determined for each color. An equation was established for predicting a theoretical value of the angle of rotation for laser beams of specific colors (wavelengths) traveling in sugared water of specific concentrations. The predicted results from the equation exhibited satisfactory agreement with the experimental values obtained from the measurements. In addition, changes in the irradiance of traveling laser beams, as well as the changes in colors observable for white light beams, were also predicted, resulting in good agreement with the observed results.

No abstract